Gospel in Art: They intended to throw Jesus down the cliff

The Little Street, by Johannes Vermeer, painted 1657-1658 © Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Source: Christian Art

Gospel of 13 March 2023
Luke 4:24-30

Jesus came to Nazara and spoke to the people in the synagogue: 'I tell you solemnly, no prophet is ever accepted in his own country.

'There were many widows in Israel, I can assure you, in Elijah's day, when heaven remained shut for three years and six months and a great famine raged throughout the land, but Elijah was not sent to any one of these: he was sent to a widow at Zarephath, a Sidonian town. And in the prophet Elisha's time there were many lepers in Israel, but none of these was cured, except the Syrian, Naaman.'

When they heard this everyone in the synagogue was enraged. They sprang to their feet and hustled him out of the town; and they took him up to the brow of the hill their town was built on, intending to throw him down the cliff, but he slipped through the crowd and walked away.

Reflection on the painting

In our Gospel reading today Jesus challenges the rather narrow view of God that the people of Nazareth, his home town, had. Just as they felt that Jesus belonged to them, so they felt that God belonged to the people of Israel. When Jesus then tries to broaden their minds by quoting some Old Testament scripture, where God seemed to favour the pagans over the Jewish people, the people of Nazareth did not at all like what he was saying. In a violent response they even wanted to throw Jesus down a cliff. Jesus' violent rejection in Nazareth foretells the even more brutal rejection in Jerusalem that will soon be upon us at the end of Lent.

The God of Jesus is more compassionate, more generous, more expansive, more inclusive, more loving, more geographically appealing than than they (or we) could ever imagine. It is a beautiful vision of how God is fundamentally 'good news' for all who are willing to receive it, irrespective of culture, race, etc….

Our painting by Vermeer shows a quiet, narrow street in Delft, Holland. The street is narrow but the alleyway in which the woman is standing is even narrower. Jesus asks us to expand our views of the world and move out of the limited, narrow views of what we can see. Standing in a narrow alleyway we can only see a very limited view of the world. Moving to larger planes will expand our views. This is an unusual painting in Vermeer's oeuvre and remarkable for its time, as it simply portrays some ordinary houses. The plain row of worn facades is rendered with meticulous attention to the mundane details that make up the history of these buildings. We notice cracks in the masonry, the peeling paint of the shutters, water stains in the whitewash that covers the brick halfway up the ground floor, etc…. We would never spend much time pondering these houses in the street, but Vermeer's scrutinising eye has made them worthy of our attention.

LINKS

Gospel in Art: https://christian.art/
Today's reflection: https://christian.art/daily-gospel-reading/luke-4-24-30-2023/